It strikes me that training for competitive swimming has to be the most boring training ever. Hours spent just going back and forth, staring at the bottom of a pool or up at the ceiling.
Is it as mind numbing as it appears to be?
As a competitive Division-1 collegiate Swimmer, I will admit that training is somewhat as mind-numbing as it seems. . . at least for much of the sport’s season. I doubt few competitive swimmers at the collegiate level would disagree either. There is a lot of going back and forth, but staring at the bottom of the pool and/or ceiling is not too much of a problem because you are constantly focusing on other things such as flip-turns, where other swimmers are at, how sore you are, etc.
There is quite some difference in training between groups that specialize in sprinting, middle distance/individual strokes, and distance, which makes different types training more boring that others, but the majority of all groups’ practices still includes tens of thousands of yards or meters a week of repetitive sets that get harder and tougher as months go by. Near the end of the season the training gets more enjoyable though as we start to taper and our daily yardage starts to drop significantly before the training winds down and we finish the taper and rest for any championship/conference meets.
Although admittedly mind numbing (at times), the hardest parts of training is not all bad. Most swimmers really enjoy the weight lifting and any cross-fitness programs done throughout the season, and most teams take fun training trips (usually in warm locations during winter months) during the hardest parts of the training which makes it much, much more enjoyable.
I’m no competitive swimmer but I do swim on my days off, 1km a day which takes me about 30mins, I could day dream for the whole period and be quite happy but instead I count my laps. I’m the type that can’t do it by time, I HAVE to make sure I do my 20laps.
Growing up, I was often so out of breath from all the sets that the time went by a lot faster than it would seem. Plus having teammates around kept things from getting too repetitive. Though I wish we had the underwater MP3 players that are around now.
When I was a competitive swimmer back as a middle schooler, I was all too happy to jump in the pool and swim when the outdoor temp was somewhere in the upper 30s to low 60s when we had practices during the fall, winter and early spring.